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Wilfred Franks

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Wilfred Florestan Franks (1908–2003) was a British artist, designer and actor.[1] He married Daphne Rudd in 1951[2]

File:Wilfred Franks.jpg
Wilfred Franks

Biography

Franks trained at the Staatliche Bauhochschule (de) in Weimar, Germany from 1929-1930. He also attended classes at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau, although he was not officially enrolled at the school.[3] On his return to England Franks worked with a mining community in the Village of Boosbeck in the northeast of England, teaching a group of unemployed miners how to design and make furniture.[4]

It was through his involvement with Boosbeck that Franks got to know the composer Michael Tippett.[5] Franks and Michael Tippett were involved in an intense love affair during the 1930s,[6] and Tippett dedicated his String Quartet No.1 to Franks.[7] Tippett remarked: "Meeting with Wilf was the deepest, most shattering experience of falling in love: and I am quite certain that it was a major factor underlying the discovery of my own individual musical ‘voice’… all that love flowed out in the slow movement of my First String Quartet."[8] Franks was an important influence on Tippett both personally and creatively, their shared love of poetry, politics and traditional folk music influenced Tippett's music at this time.[9]

Wilf Franks was an anti-fascist, Marxist political activist who supported Trotskyism and the Fourth International.[10] While living in Germany, Franks was part of an anti-fascist counter demonstration which failed to stop a Nazi parade in the city of Dessau.[11] On Sunday 4 October 1936, Franks was arrested (and later sentenced to 28 days hard labour) while helping to block a march by the British Union of Fascists, during the Battle of Cable Street.[12][13]

In 1936 Franks studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts,[14] and later performed on numerous early BBC Television shows, including The Insect Play (1939) and The Pilgrims Progress (1939).[15] During the second half of the 1930s, Franks became a dancer with Margaret Barr's Dance Drama Group,[16] performing in productions such as "Miners" (1936) and "Dance of Two With Chorus" (1937) at the Embassy Theatre, London in 1936.[17]

Due to his political beliefs, Franks refused conscription to the British Army and he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War II.[18]

In the post war years, Franks became a designer at the Ford Motor Company at Dagenham and later a lecturer in design at Leeds Polytechnic.[19]

File:Wilf watercolour 5 (2).jpg
Wilf watercolour 5 (2)

Wilf Franks' design work with the mining community of Boosbeck provided inspiration to the artist Adam Clarke, a graduate of the Royal College of Art.[20] In 2015, Clarke established New Boosbeck Industries, replicating the furniture making project that Wilf Franks had initiated in the 1930s.[21] The life and work of Franks also featured in the Twentieth Century Society symposium 'Bye Bye Bauhaus,' held at The University of Westminster School of Architecture in 2019.[22]

References

  1. ^ "Wilfred Franks imdb". IMDB. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  2. ^ Soden, Oliver (2019). Michael Tippett The Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 561. ISBN 978 1 4746 0602 8.
  3. ^ Powers, Alan (2019). Bauhuas Goes West. Modern Art And Design in Britain And America. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 184–186. ISBN 978-0-500-51992-9.
  4. ^ "New Boosbeck Industries". visitmima.com. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  5. ^ Chase, Malcolm; Whyman, Mark (1991). Heartbreak Hill. A Response to Unemployment in East Cleveland in the 1930s. Cleveland County Council & Langbaurgh-on-Tees Borough Council. pp. 26–27. ISBN 0904784207.
  6. ^ Gloag, Kenneth; Jones, Nicholas (2013). The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett. Cambridge University Press. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-1-107-02197-6.
  7. ^ Gloag, Kenneth; Jones, Nicholas (17 January 2013). The Cambridge Companion to Michael Tippett. Cambridge University Press. p. 209. ISBN 978-1-107-02197-6.
  8. ^ Tippett, Michael (1991). Those Twentieth-Century Blues: An Autobiography. Hutchinson. p. 58.
  9. ^ Gilgan, Danyel. "Michael Tippett: love in the age of extremes". The British Library. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  10. ^ "100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus". World Socialist Website.org. Retrieved 23 June 2020.
  11. ^ MacCarthy, Fiona (2019). Gropius: The Man who Built the Bauhaus. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 233. ISBN 978-0571295142.
  12. ^ Soden, Oliver (2019). Michael Tippett The Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 191–192. ISBN 978-1-4746-0602-8.
  13. ^ Gilgan, Danyel. "Michael Tippett: Love in The Age of Extremes". The British Library. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  14. ^ "Student and graduate profiles Wilfred Franks". RADA. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  15. ^ "Wilfred Franks imdb". IMDB. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
  16. ^ Soden, Oliver (2019). Michael Tippett The Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 207. ISBN 978 1 4746 0602 8.
  17. ^ Gilgan, Danyel (2020). The Life Before: My Grandfather's Life Uncovered. London: Danyel Gilgan. p. 131. ISBN 978-1-5272-6135-8.
  18. ^ Soden, Oliver (2019). Michael Tippett The Biography. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 280. ISBN 978-1-4746-0602-8.
  19. ^ Powers, Alan (2019). Bauhuas Goes West. Modern Art And Design in Britain And America. Thames & Hudson. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-500-51992-9.
  20. ^ "Marton artist Adam Clarke finds his muse in the history of East Cleveland". Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  21. ^ "New Boosbeck Industries". visitmima.com. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  22. ^ "Bye Bye Bauhaus Symposium". c20society.org. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
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